Vodacom hits 50 million customers
Vodacom on Thursday (19 July) reported a 29.2% rise in customers in a trading statement for the quarter ended June 2012, hitting the 50 million mark.
Group revenue improved 9.3% to R17.02 billion, from R15.57 billion in 2011, but only up 0.9% on a quarterly basis. South African revenue was up 3.5% to R14 billion, and International revenue advanced as much as 46.2% to R3.097 billion year on year.
Group service revenue growth was up 8.7% to R14.74 billion. South Africa’s service revenue grew 1.8% to R11.769 billion. Excluding the impact of the cuts in MTRs service revenue growth was 4.6%, a 0.6 percentage point deterioration compared to the growth rate experienced in the previous quarter. This reflects the slowdown in data revenue growth, Vodacom said.
Voice revenue growth remained stable compared to the previous quarter at 1.5%, the roup said.
South Africa
Customers increased 29.1% year on year to 31 million, adding two million customers during the quarter. “Our highly competitive value offers in the prepaid market saw customers increase 35.4% and stronger growth in voice traffic. Despite the 6.9% growth in
contract customers we saw a reduction in contract voice traffic largely as a result of the continued reduction of out-of bundle usage,” said Pieter Uys, Vodacom Group CEO.
Blended ARPU of R130 came down 20.7% as a result of a larger portion of lower activity customers coupled with a reduction in MTRs.
“We are delivering on our strategy of putting the internet in more people’s hands, with active data customers increasing 28.6% year on year to 12.4 million. Data bundle users increased 48.5% to 4.5 million,” the CEO said.
Customer growth and higher usage were somewhat offset by heightened mobile broadband competition, reducing Vodacom’s effective price per megabyte by 26.1%. The net effect was an increase in data revenue of 10.1%.
Smartphones remain a key growth driver with active smartphones increasing 40.9% year on year to 4.9 million devices and usage almost doubling to approximately 120 megabytes per smartphone customer per month compared to a year ago, Uys said.
He pointed to further significant investments to improve the speed and coverage of Vodacom’s data networks, adding 109 3G base stations in the quarter. “We also continue to invest in increasing the capacity of our voice networks to support higher customer usage.”
“Overall this was a good quarter with a particularly strong performance from our International operations supporting group service revenue growth of 8.7%. The connectivity revolution is well underway with close to 16 million customers actively using data, up 43% from the prior year,” Uys said.
International
Uys said he was particularly pleased with the sustained high growth delivered by the International operations. “The primary driver has been solid commercial execution, supported by a healthy macroeconomic environment. Service revenue from these businesses now accounts for 21% of group service revenue, compared to 14.5% two years ago. Data demand in this segment is accelerating, with active data customers increasing 152% and data revenue up 150%.”
The International mobile operations sustained strong service revenue growth of 64.5% with good performance across all markets.
Vodacom said that Tanzania maintained service revenue growth momentum, benefiting from its commercial actions and an improved pricing environment. Mozambique also experienced significant growth with more sites on air, smarter pricing and better distribution resulting in an overall increase in minutes of use.
Strong growth in customer numbers from wider distribution in the DRC has driven the solid growth in service revenue, the mobile operator said.
“Encouragingly, data revenue is showing significant growth in the International operations, up 150.0% in comparison to the prior year,” Uys said.
Year on year data customer growth accelerated to 151.9%, with 3.3 million customers now actively using data. Data growth was driven by a combination of increased take up of mobile internet services as well as increased M-Pesa usage in Tanzania.
“M-Pesa is progressing well in Tanzania, with active customers increasing 120.7% in to 3.6 million. M-Pesa revenue accounts for 70.8% of Tanzania’s overall data revenue and 12.3% of service revenue,” Uys said.
Earlier this month, Vodacom announced that Uys would step down in March 2013, and would be replaced by current head of Vodafone’s Spanish unit, Shameel Joosub.
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